IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/14954.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Obfuscation, Learning, and the Evolution of Investor Sophistication

Author

Listed:
  • Bruce Ian Carlin
  • Gustavo Manso

Abstract

Investor sophistication has lagged behind the growing complexity of retail financial markets. To explore this, we develop a dynamic model to study the interaction between obfuscation and investor sophistication. Taking into account different learning mechanisms within the investor population, we characterize the optimal timing of obfuscation for financial institutions who offer retail products. Obfuscation decreases with competition among firms, but increases with higher investor participation in the market. We show that educational initiatives that are directed to facilitate learning by investors may induce producers to increase wasteful obfuscation, further disorienting investors and decreasing overall welfare.

Suggested Citation

  • Bruce Ian Carlin & Gustavo Manso, 2009. "Obfuscation, Learning, and the Evolution of Investor Sophistication," NBER Working Papers 14954, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:14954
    Note: CF
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w14954.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. John Conlisk & Eitan Gerstner & Joel Sobel, 1984. "Cyclic Pricing by a Durable Goods Monopolist," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 99(3), pages 489-505.
    2. James J. Choi & David Laibson & Brigitte C. Madrian, 2010. "Why Does the Law of One Price Fail? An Experiment on Index Mutual Funds," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(4), pages 1405-1432, April.
    3. Robert, Jacques & Stahl, Dale O, II, 1993. "Informative Price Advertising in a Sequential Search Model," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 61(3), pages 657-686, May.
    4. Mas-Colell,Andreu, 1990. "The Theory of General Economic Equilibrium," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521388702.
    5. Debreu, Gerard, 1970. "Economies with a Finite Set of Equilibria," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 38(3), pages 387-392, May.
    6. Lusardi, Annamaria & Mitchell, Olivia S., 2007. "Baby Boomer retirement security: The roles of planning, financial literacy, and housing wealth," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 205-224, January.
    7. Rosenthal, Robert W, 1982. "A Dynamic Oligopoly Game with Lags in Demand: More on the Monotonicity of Price in the Number of Sellers," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 23(2), pages 353-360, June.
    8. Gabriel D. Carroll & James J. Choi & David Laibson & Brigitte C. Madrian & Andrew Metrick, 2009. "Optimal Defaults and Active Decisions," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(4), pages 1639-1674.
    9. Xavier Gabaix & David Laibson, 2018. "Shrouded attributes, consumer myopia and information suppression in competitive markets," Chapters, in: Victor J. Tremblay & Elizabeth Schroeder & Carol Horton Tremblay (ed.), Handbook of Behavioral Industrial Organization, chapter 3, pages 40-74, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    10. Alexander, Gordon J. & Jones, Jonathan D. & Nigro, Peter J., 1998. "Mutual fund shareholders: characteristics, investor knowledge, and sources of information," Financial Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 7(4), pages 301-316.
    11. Steven Salop, 1977. "The Noisy Monopolist: Imperfect Information, Price Dispersion and Price Discrimination," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 44(3), pages 393-406.
    12. Carlin, Bruce I., 2009. "Strategic price complexity in retail financial markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(3), pages 278-287, March.
    13. Vives, Xavier, 1990. "Nash equilibrium with strategic complementarities," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 305-321.
    14. Ali Hortaçsu & Chad Syverson, 2004. "Product Differentiation, Search Costs, and Competition in the Mutual Fund Industry: A Case Study of S&P 500 Index Funds," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(2), pages 403-456.
    15. Brad M. Barber & Terrance Odean & Lu Zheng, 2005. "Out of Sight, Out of Mind: The Effects of Expenses on Mutual Fund Flows," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 78(6), pages 2095-2120, November.
    16. Glenn Ellison & Alexander Wolitzky, 2012. "A search cost model of obfuscation," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 43(3), pages 417-441, September.
    17. Varian, Hal R, 1980. "A Model of Sales," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(4), pages 651-659, September.
    18. Joel Sobel, 1984. "The Timing of Sales," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 51(3), pages 353-368.
    19. Mitchell, Olivia S. & Utkus, Stephen P. (ed.), 2004. "Pension Design and Structure: New Lessons from Behavioral Finance," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199273393.
    20. Carlin, Bruce Ian & Dorobantu, Florin & Viswanathan, S., 2009. "Public trust, the law, and financial investment," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(3), pages 321-341, June.
    21. James J. Choi & David Laibson & Brigitte C. Madrian, 2010. "Why Does the Law of One Price Fail? An Experiment on Index Mutual Funds," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(4), pages 1405-1432, April.
    22. Stahl, Dale O, II, 1989. "Oligopolistic Pricing with Sequential Consumer Search," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(4), pages 700-712, September.
    23. Steven Salop & Joseph Stiglitz, 1977. "Bargains and Ripoffs: A Model of Monopolistically Competitive Price Dispersion," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 44(3), pages 493-510.
    24. Darrell Duffie & Gustavo Manso, 2007. "Information Percolation in Large Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(2), pages 203-209, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Victor Mendes & Margarida Abreu, 2014. "The Investor in Structured Retail Products: Marketing Driven or Gambling Oriented?," EcoMod2014 6621, EcoMod.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Carlin, Bruce I., 2009. "Strategic price complexity in retail financial markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(3), pages 278-287, March.
    2. Øystein Foros & Mai Nguyen-Ones & Frode Steen, 2021. "The Effects of a Day off from Retail Price Competition: Evidence on Consumer Behavior and Firm Performance in Gasoline Retailing," International Journal of the Economics of Business, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(1), pages 49-87, January.
    3. Wilson, Chris M., 2010. "Ordered search and equilibrium obfuscation," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 28(5), pages 496-506, September.
    4. Ioana Chioveanu & Jidong Zhou, 2013. "Price Competition with Consumer Confusion," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(11), pages 2450-2469, November.
    5. Yiquan Gu & Tobias Wenzel, 2012. "Strategic Obfuscation and Consumer Protection Policy in Financial Markets: Theory and Experimental Evidence," Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Competition Policy (CCP) 2012-14, Centre for Competition Policy, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    6. Huck, Steffen & Zhou, Jidong, 2011. "Consumer behavioural biases in competition: A survey," MPRA Paper 31794, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Chioveanu, Ioana & Zhou, Jidong, 2009. "Price Competition and Consumer Confusion," MPRA Paper 17340, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Bruce I. Carlin & Simon Gervais, 2009. "Legal Protection in Retail Financial Markets," NBER Working Papers 14972, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Hämäläinen, Saara, 2022. "Multiproduct search obfuscation," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    10. Gu, Yiquan & Wenzel, Tobias, 2020. "Curbing obfuscation: Empower consumers or regulate firms?," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    11. Katja Seim & Michael Sinkinson, 2016. "Mixed pricing in online marketplaces," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 14(2), pages 129-155, June.
    12. Bruce Carlin & Arna Olafsson & Michaela Pagel, 2017. "FinTech Adoption Across Generations: Financial Fitness in the Information Age," NBER Working Papers 23798, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Baylis, Kathy & Perloff, Jeffrey M., 2001. "Price Dispersion on the Internet: Good Firms and Bad Firms," Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley, Working Paper Series qt2t0770rn, Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley.
    14. Janssen, Aljoscha & Kasinger, Johannes, 2021. "Obfuscation and rational inattention in digitalized markets," SAFE Working Paper Series 306, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    15. Michael Grubb, 2015. "Failing to Choose the Best Price: Theory, Evidence, and Policy," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 47(3), pages 303-340, November.
    16. Yiquan Gu & Tobias Wenzel, 2014. "Strategic Obfuscation and Consumer Protection Policy," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(4), pages 632-660, December.
    17. Lunn, Pete & Somerville, Jason J., 2015. "Surplus Identification with Non-Linear Returns," Papers WP522, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
    18. Baylis, Kathy & Perloff, Jeffrey M., 2001. "Price Dispersion on the Internet: Good Firms and Bad Firms," Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, Working Paper Series qt2t0770rn, Institute of Industrial Relations, UC Berkeley.
    19. Liu, Lu, 2019. "Non-salient fees in the mortgage market," Bank of England working papers 819, Bank of England.
    20. Kathy Baylis & Jeffrey Perloff, 2002. "Price Dispersion on the Internet: Good Firms and Bad Firms," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 21(3), pages 305-324, November.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:14954. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.